The Weight of Loss

The Weight of Loss

Sally Oliver

Sally Oliver

'Daring, unsettling and original, The Weight of Loss is a debut to savour.' Victoria Gosling, author of Before the Ruins How do you find peace after a devastating loss? A search for solace takes a dark turn in this electrifying debut. Marianne is grieving. Still reeling from the loss of her sister, she wakes up one day to discover a thick, black hair protruding from her spine. Her doctor assures her that the inexplicable growth is a physical reaction to grief. Forced to admit that she isn't coping, Marianne accepts the offer of a quiet recovery at Nede, a remote health retreat in the Welsh countryside. But all is not as it seems at Nede, and Marianne feels herself starting to lose control: of her body, her mind, and her memories. Why are her fellow patients so unwilling to talk? Can she trust the staff who claim to be so keen to help her? The escape she has craved for so long might finally be possible. But...
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Garden of Earthly Bodies

Garden of Earthly Bodies

Sally Oliver

Sally Oliver

An exquisitely eerie and unsettling speculative novel that grapples with questions of trauma, identity, and the workings of memoryMonths after her sister’s death, Marianne wakes up to find a growth of thick black hairs along her spine. They defy her attempts to remove them, instead proliferating, growing longer. The hairs, Marianne’s doctor tells her, are a reaction to trauma, developed in the wake of the loss of her sister, Marie. Her doctor recommends that Marianne visits Nede, a modern, New Age rehabilitation center in a remote forest in Wales where the patients attend unorthodox therapy sessions and commune with nature. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As the hairs on her back continue to grow, the past starts to entangle itself with the present and the borders of her consciousness threaten to disintegrate. She finds herself drawn back compulsively to the memory of Marie, obsessing...
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